


The Iron Man and the Daughter of the Stars

by phoenixyfriend



Category: Avengers: Infinity War - Fandom, Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Child Death Mention, Gen, PTSD, We all knew this was coming, someone's probably already done it but let me toss this on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-05 01:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14605776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixyfriend/pseuds/phoenixyfriend
Summary: They're the only two left, and they need a way out. First, though, they need to talk.





	The Iron Man and the Daughter of the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know if this is in-character, but enjoy.

He heard the footsteps before she spoke. She seemed Natasha’s type, the kind that had trained to walk in complete silence, but was aware of how much people preferred it when she announced her presence.

“You made him bleed,” she said, and Tony was once again struck by the strange qualities to her voice. Not quite a vocoder, but… something. With all the tech he could see on her, it wasn’t surprising. “You’re the first person to do that in a long time.”

“Fat lot of good it did,” Tony said. He didn’t look away from the pile of ashes at his feet. He was still sitting on the ground.

(He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d watched the kid fall apart in his arms. Time wasn’t working right for his brain. He was in space, with no obvious way home. The kid was dead. A lot of people were dead. It wasn’t—he couldn’t—there was no way to stop staring.)

She didn’t respond to that, just stepped around him to look at the pile. “Which one was this?”

“Peter,” he said, and tried to ignore the pinching in the muscles under his cheeks, or the way his eyes burned.

“Quill?” the blue lady asked, sounding just a little confused.

“No,” Tony said, suddenly reminded that the Guardians had a Peter on the team, too. “Parker. Peter Parker. Spider-man. He was… just a kid. Teenager. He wasn’t even supposed to _be_ here, I told him to stay planetside, it was too much for… for…”

“Your son?” She asked.

“No,” Tony said, shaking his head. “Just… I’m the reason he got dragged into this mess. If I hadn’t contacted him, he never would have tried to fight aliens, never would have gotten disintegrated, never—”

“He would have died anyway,” she interrupted. “Thanos is a genocidal maniac, but he doesn’t like lying. He said it was randomized, so it almost definitely was.”

“Then how do you explain how it targeted so much of the team here, when we had so many people fighting?” Tony asked.

She shifted, mouth twitching into a frown. There was a whirring noise, low and quick. “Subconscious, maybe. He didn’t like the Guardians much, and I don’t think he was a fan of your friends’ tricks. He said he respected you, though, and I think he at least convinced himself he cared for me. I don’t know why he bothered to try, since Gamora was always his favorite, but…”

“His favorite?” Tony asked.

“Thanos sometimes adopted children from the worlds he attacked,” she told him. “I don’t know why. Maybe it was to convince himself he wasn’t as much of a monster as he was. I was one of those children.”

“Shitty dad?” Tony asked.

“The worst,” she said, sitting down next to him. “Every time I disappointed him, he replaced another part of my body with a machine, until I stopped failing.”

“Yeah, that’s a shitty dad, alright,” Tony muttered.

“He said your name. I don’t remember it.”

“Tony,” he said, and reached across his body to give her his hand. She took it and shook, grip careful. “Tony Stark.”

“Nebula, Daughter of Thanos.”

“How old are you?” Tony asked. “Like, compared to how long your species normally lives and develops.”

Nebula paused, considered, and spoke. “I’ve listened to Gamora’s stories on how old Quill is, when I questioned the relationship. Humans age similarly to most sapient species, including mine. I’m… perhaps in my late twenties, by your standards.”

Tony nodded. Not a kid, but close.

“And you?”

“Forty-eight,” he answered. “Almost definitely past the halfway point, especially considering this.”

He tapped his chest piece, and Nebula’s eyes flickered down.

“Cyborg?”

“Technically. I had a heart condition; there was shrapnel digging its way to my heart, and a powerful electromagnet in the center was the only way to keep my alive. I had a surgery to remove the shrapnel, but I kept the reactor, and I’ve done enough to my body since then to count in other ways,” Tony said. It was public knowledge, mostly, and right now, this woman was his only ally.

She looked down at her arm, metal fingers bending and unbending as she considered something. She shook her head. “Are there any funerary rites or whatever that you want to do for your friends before we find a way off of this planet?”

Tony considered, and then sighed. “Think any of the other Guardians are still alive?”

“Gamora’s dead,” Nebula said. “I don’t know about the rat or the tree.”

“I think they’re the ones who went with Thor…” Tony said, running through the conversation Quill. He had shit to do before he could get to work on fixing things. He wasn’t the _only_ person who could fix things, but he had a certain amount of power, and that meant a certain amount of responsibility, and Thanos was bad enough news that anyone who _could_ help was morally obligated to or whatever. And if that meant compartmentalizing… then so be it. “Do you remember which pile was which Guardian?”

“My eye records everything,” Nebula said.

“Great. We’ll bottle up and label as much as we can of each person, and then give it to whoever the closest friend or relative was. If the two you mentioned survived, they can decide what to do with the ones that died here. If not… I guess it’ll be up to you.”

Nebula made a face.

“Strange had a friend, Wong. He can take Strange’s, and I know where to find May Parker,” Tony ran through the options in his head. “Getting to Earth is going to be a trip, but it’s the place we’re most likely to find Thor and Bruce, and I’m banking on them as our most powerful fighters.”

“They might be dead,” Nebula warned. “And not much use against Thanos.”

“If Thor got his hammer replaced, then he’s the best we’ve got,” Tony said, clapping his hands together and rubbing them. The lack of armor was leaving him… chilly. “Do you have any contacts that would be willing to help out?”

Nebula frowned again. “I might be able to contact Kraglin, get the Ravagers involved. They’re not powerful, but there’s a lot of them, and they’re organized. Even if they got hit extra hard by Thanos, there should still be enough of them to help.”

“Friend?”

“Of Quill’s. He doesn’t like me much,” Nebula said.

“Got any friends?”

“I had Gamora.”

And that was really all that needed to be said on that front.

“Do you have anyone that might still be alive on Earth?” Nebula asked. “That you would trust with your life?”

“Pepper,” Tony said immediately. “Bruce. Rhodey. Happy. I don’t know if they’re alive, but I trust them. Vision probably isn’t. The mind stone was part of his brain.”

“Makes sense,” Nebula grunted. She stood up, and then immediately sat down again as her knee buckled with a worrying hiss of gears.

“Want me to take a look?” Tony asked.

“Do you know anything about this kind of technology?” she bit out.

“No, but I managed to figure out how to fly a spaceship that used technology I’d never seen before a few minutes after I stepped inside, and I’m one of the foremost engineering minds on my planet, so I probably can’t hurt.”

“Just one of?”

“There’s this girl out in Wakanda that I’ve been hearing amazing things about,” Tony admitted. “Haven’t had a chance to meet her yet, but since Wakanda opened its borders, I’ve heard a lot about their tech, and most of it seems to trace back to her. She’s… she’s Peter’s age.”

Nebula glanced at the pile of dust that had once been a teenager. She looked at Tony. “Your armor. How does it work?”

“Why?”

“It worked on Thanos, and it changes in the blink of an eye. I want to know why.”

“It’s nanotechnology, powered by an arc reactor,” Tony said. “The latest version, anyway. I can only control it because of the implants.”

“You’re missing most of it,” Nebula pointed out. “Thanos punched it off.”

“Not for long. The nanobots can repair each other, and the ones that were still working are off fixing the broken ones right now. It’ll be a few hours, but I’ll have most of it fixed by then,” Tony said, then cracked his neck from side to side. He stood up. “I should probably get the stuff I used to plug up the hole on the ship.”

“The hole?”

“We made a hole to get rid of that magic guy working for Thanos. Couldn’t take him on directly, so we let the void of space do the work for us,” Tony said, and then the momentary lift in mood from remembering the moment disappeared. “It was the kid’s idea.”

Nebula watched him, head tilted, and then extended her leg. “There’s something wrong with the joint, if you want to take a look.”

Tony knelt down next to her and called up a few of the nanobots he still had on his person to form a mask over one eye, projecting a hologram to magnify the joint.

He formed a screwdriver and got to work.

“The people you mentioned,” Nebula said. “What are they to you?”

“Rhodey’s been my best friend for over twenty years, Bruce is my science bro, and Pepper’s my fiancée,” Tony rattled off.

“You’re engaged?”

“Yeah, bit late in the game, still good.” He focused on the joints, tried not to think about how likely it was that one of his friends was dead. That more than one of his friends was dead. That…

“We’re going to have to delay the wedding,” he laughed, humorless, and Nebula didn’t call him on it.

“You got a plan?” Nebula asked.

“Fix my bots, find a way off the planet, build a way off if I can’t find one,” Tony said. “Head to Earth, find anyone who can help fight, get the gauntlet, fix things.”

“And if you can’t get the gauntlet?”

“Die trying,” Tony said, and slipped a piece of the joint back into place. He frowned. “These don’t look like battle injuries.”

“Torture,” Nebula said, voice even flatter than it had been so far. “Thanos hurt me to make Gamora tell him where the Soul Stone was.”

Tony paused, then shuddered and went back to his work. “Okay. What other injuries do you have?”

“My eye keeps popping forward,” Nebula told him. “My wrist is clicking out of alignment on certain motions. I think something in my shoulder is bent out of shape.”

Tony nodded. “Tell me if you notice anything else.”

He’s not a doctor. He doesn’t have a medical degree, not like Strange, or even something close like Bruce. He definitely isn’t qualified for alien biology. He’s good at new things, though, and he’s good at machines, which means he’s got enough on his side to help Nebula.

“I came here in a pod,” Nebula said. “It crashed.”

“We came here in one of Thanos’s donut ships,” Tony told her. “It crashed too.”

“I thought you said you figured out how to fly it,” Nebula said.

“I did. I just wasn’t very good at it,” Tony told her. He tossed on a weak grin, but she didn’t seem to appreciate it.

“I’ve been here before,” Nebula said. “And I know how the disc ships are organized. I can raid the kitchens and find something to hold the ashes while you work on… whatever.”

“Taking a look at your pod,” Tony said. “Easier to fix something small than build from scratch, with our resources. You know space better than I do, so I’m guessing you’ll know how to get where we’re going.”

“We?” She demanded.

“You want him dead as much as I do, right?”

Nebula pursed her lips and nodded.

“Got any ideas better than getting in contact with Thor? You’re the one that knows Thanos best, including the biggest threats to his power and how to find him.”

“I get it,” Nebula grunted. “We’ll go to Earth, find Thor. We’ll need to stop off somewhere first. Knowhere and Xandar are in ruins. The Kree are still in conflict with themselves, last I heard, and Sakaar’s recovering from a civil war.”

“Those Ravagers?” Tony asked.

“I can check once we’re somewhere with better communications tech, make some calls,” Nebula said. “We’ll be going to some awful places for this, you know. Hives of scum and villainy, or whatever it was that Quill said about Knowhere.”

“So we’ll be doing Mos Eisley,” Tony said. “I can work with that.”

“You seem like a rich type.”

“I once spent three months half-dead in a cave being forced to work for the people who’d captured me under threat of torture,” he said. He grinned again, and Nebula blinked. “I replaced the car battery that was powering the electromagnet with my first arc reactor, built a suit of armor from a box of scraps, and broke out. I came back later to break up the terrorist cell that got me in the first place.”

Nebula nodded slowly.

“I know how to rough it,” Tony assured her, patting her uninjured shoulder. He shifted for better access to the next problem. “Alright, kid, show me what’s up with that eye.”

Something in him was starting to burn under the cold numbness of all the deaths.

(Strange had said it was the only way, and he’d also said there was only one scenario in which they won. Time to make sure the doc was right.)

**Author's Note:**

> Probably won't be continuing this, but it was fun.
> 
> Find me on tumblr @phoenixyfriend (personal/fandom blog) or @phoenix-k-scriven-fiction (original writing and genre inspiration blog).


End file.
